Things We Love: Footy’s

My boys have an addiction to juice. We kept them both only on water until J was 2 but when he was introduced to juice it became inevitable that Seb would hop on the bandwagon. We only gave them fruit juice watered down with water, but I would have still preferred them to drink only water.

Then Footy’s sent me a hamper of their juice mix. I was super sceptical but was willing to give it a try. Then when the boys loved it I was even MORE sceptical because I thought it must have loads of nasties in it.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

Footy’s is a cooldrink powder that you mix with water. It tastes nice – the naartjie and lemon flavours are great for more adult tastebuds – and the bonus is it is sugar-free and preservative-free. It’s made with natural ingredients and is high in vitamin C. It does have natural sweeteners (Erythritol and Stevia) and it can be very sweet but the beauty of it is you can make it as strong or as weak as you want (the less, the better, actually) and it has only 0.1g of sugar and 18kj per 15ml serving.

In fact, Erythritol is naturally found in fruit and Stevia is a plant. Both have zero calories or have any effect on blood sugar.

If all this sounds too good too be true, you’re right, it does – but Footy’s is accredited by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of South Africa and Diabetes South Africa, so they must be doing something right.

It’s available in 6 flavours in both powder and ready-to-drink bottles:

strawberry, naartjie, passion fruit, raspberry, lemon & lime, and grape.

As I said, the strawberry, passion fruit, raspberry and grape are popular with the little kids while the naartjie and lemon & lime are popular with the older kid and the adults.

Plus, I’ve discovered that there are a few cool things you can do with Footy’s besides drinking it. I added a teeny tiny bit to plain yoghurt and froze it, making delicious, sugar-free frozen yoghurt.